ALPINE — Visit Alpine, Texas brought home four awards in the inaugural Texas Travel Awards. Launched by the publishers of Austin Monthly, San Antonio Magazine and Texas Music, the awards set out to celebrate the top travel destinations and attractions across the Lone Star State in a year when the travel industry is working hard to bounce back after significant impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Despite travel coming to a halt in spring 2020, convention and visitors’ bureaus and tourism-related businesses found innovative ways to continue engaging with the community last year and happily welcomed travelers back as Texans once again began to explore and enjoy this great state. The Texas Travel Awards recognized that creativity along with tried and true favorites from every region with its first class of winners in 42 categories, divided into statewide competition and by population.
Alpine made four entries into the small market categories, and came away with all four awards: Museum of the Big Bend won Best Museum/Cultural Institution, Alpine’s downtown murals won Best Public Art Display, Viva Big Bend won Best Music Festival and Visit Alpine, Texas won Best Destination Social Media Account for their Facebook and Instagram feeds.
“It’s been a great year for travel awards in the Big Bend, and it’s wonderful to see our communities’ efforts being recognized,” said Chris Ruggia, Alpine’s Director of Tourism. “It’s no surprise to the folks living here that we have a first-class museum, that Viva Big Bend is an incredible live music experience, and that all the new mural activity downtown is something special – but of course it feels great to have that acknowledged at the state level.”
“I was also thrilled to see Fort Davis winning the Best Fourth of July Celebration,” Ruggia continued, “and that was a statewide award, not broken out by population. They were competing against the big cities as well, so kudos to Melissa Henderson at the Fort Davis Chamber and everyone working with her.”
All winners were announced in a virtual awards ceremony, held in September and available to view on texastravelawards.com. The winners will also be announced in the November issues of Austin Monthly and San Antonio Magazine and featured in a special digital publication, launching Nov. 1 on texastravelawards.com.